She fights for justice; he bends the rules. Together, they break all of them in this scandalously sexy legal drama.

Soon after passing the bar exam, Talia Tate is tasked to assist her father, the head of Tate & Associates, with the controversial State v. Duncan trial. Talia is determined to prove to her father, the firm, and herself that she is a brilliant lawyer worthy of respect. Her stress hits a fever pitch when she realizes she’ll have an unexpected face-off on her first case.

Detective Maddox Reed doesn’t mind cutting corners when closing a case. Since his days in patrol, the locals knew to steer clear of “Speedy Reed-y.” When Donovan Duncan was brought into his squad room, he was ready to send him to prison without an interrogation. He thought the case was cut-and-dried . . . until Talia comes to his office with fingers pointed, ready to get Donovan the justice he deserves.

Representing opposite sides of the law, Talia and Maddox find themselves fighting two battles: justice and lust. How could they fall in love under circumstances so polarizing that the whole world can feel the tension? While both of them are in a race to come out on top, surprising feelings make it difficult to separate business from pleasure. Will these two souls find solace with each other? Or will the burden of love be too hard to bear?

"Lorde's words — on race, cancer, intersectionality, parenthood, injustice — burn with relevance 25 years after her death." — O, The Oprah Magazine

Winner of the 1988 Before Columbus Foundation National Book Award, this path-breaking collection of essays is a clarion call to build communities that nurture our spirit. Lorde announces the need for a radical politics of intersectionality while struggling to maintain her own faith as she wages a battle against liver cancer. From reflections on her struggle with the disease to thoughts on lesbian sexuality and African-American identity in a straight white man's world, Lorde's voice remains enduringly relevant in today's political landscape.

Those who practice and encourage social justice activism frequently quote her exhortation, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." In addition to the journal entries of "A Burst of Light: Living with Cancer," this edition includes an interview, "Sadomasochism: Not About Condemnation," and three essays, "I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities," "Apartheid U.S.A.," and "Turning the Beat Around: Lesbian Parenting 1986," as well as a new Foreword by Sonia Sanchez.

"You don't read Audre Lorde, you feel her." — Essence

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A woman learns the hard way about mixing business with pleasure in this hilarious new romantic comedy by USA Today bestselling author Sharon C. Cooper.

I am beautiful. I am confident. I am lovable. I am a lottery winner.

This is the mantra that will get Dreamy Daniels through each day until she makes it big. So what if she lives in a seedy part of Los Angeles in a house that’s one earthquake away from crumbling, or works an unfulfilling secretarial job while struggling to finish her bachelor’s degree? All Dreamy needs to do is win the lottery, which she’s been entering in as a weekly tradition with her grandfather. When she catches the attention of her boss’s potential investor, Dreamy has to remind herself to focus on her career goals so she can be her own boss. Who cares if he has the social grace of the Duke of Sussex and the suaveness of Idris Elba? No distractions allowed.

Growing up with a father who is an A-list actor and a socialite mother, venture capitalist Karter Redford lives in the world of the rich and famous. Instead of attending movie premieres, however, he prefers spending his time helping the less fortunate, backing start-up companies and investing in cutting-edge ideas. Karter is used to his life revolving around work, but when he decides he wants someone to share it with, he falls for someone his mother would never approve of: hilarious, quirky Dreamy, who has goals of her own…but also isn’t a wealthy, upper-crust socialite. Though it’s clear they’re from different worlds, their relationship might just be his greatest investment yet.

Published in 1982, But Some of Us Are Brave was the first-ever Black women's studies reader and a foundational text of contemporary feminism. 

Featuring writing from eminent scholars, activists, teachers, and writers, such as the Combahee River Collective and Alice Walker, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Bravechallenges the absence of Black feminist thought in women’s studies, confronts racism, and investigates the mythology surrounding Black women in the social sciences. 

As the first comprehensive collection of Black feminist scholarship, But Some of Us Are Brave was recognized by Audre Lorde as “the beginning of a new era, where the ‘women’ in women’s studies will no longer mean ‘white.’” 

Coeditors Akasha (Gloria T.) Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith are authors and former women's studies professors. Brittney C. Cooper is a professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of several books, including Eloquent Rage, named by Emma Watson as an Our Shared Shelf read for November/December 2018.

“Having been Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina and Esther Greenwood all my life, my writing was an opportunity for the reader to have to be me…” 

Shortly after flight MAS370 goes missing, scholarship student Girl boards her own mysterious flight from Australia to London to work on a dissertation on Sylvia Plath. Though she is ambivalent toward academia and harbors ideas about writing a post-colonial novel, if only she could work out just what that means, Girl relishes the freedom that has come with distance from the expectations and judgements of her very tight-knit Malaysian-Australian family. At last Girl has an opportunity to live on her own terms. 

Unfolding across Girl’s time at an artist residency in Scotland as she makes friends and enemies alike in a world far removed from any she’s ever known, But the Girl is a wry and playfully philosophical coming of age novel that reveals the joys, embarrassments, pleasures, and agonies of trying to discover and understand who you are. Girl grapples with the long shadow of colonialism, the pressure of expectations in immigrant families, and the sometimes difficult fact that those closest to us remain the most unknowable.

A deeply personal, paradigm-shifting book rethinking traditional therapy and self-care, creating much-needed space for those left out of the narrative

Writer and therapist Sahaj Kaur Kohli grew up knowing exactly what it means to straddle multiple cultures at once. Like many children of immigrants, she has often found herself plagued by questions: Can I establish my own values and embrace where I come from? Is prioritizing my mental health really rejecting my culture? How do I set boundaries and care for myself when family and community mean everything? Even after becoming a therapist herself, she saw those same gaps in the mental health world, leading her to wonder, like so many children of immigrants: what about us?

While conversations around mental health are becoming increasingly open, our models remain largely Eurocentric and focused on individuality. Sahaj has sought to challenge these long-held models, using deep personal reflection, therapy, community building, and a whole lot of trial and error, eventually navigating her own way to understanding and acceptance. Here, she shows us how to get there, all the while reminding us that personal healing is inextricably connected to collective healing.

But What Will People Say? elegantly weaves together personal narrative, anecdotal analysis, and comprehensive research. Sahaj offers advice and tools for everything from navigating generational trauma, guilt, and boundaries, to breaking down stigmas around therapy and celebrating cultural duality. Democratizing and decolonizing the way we think about mental health and self-help, Sahaj’s incredible work is nothing short of a revolution.

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A wide-ranging collection, including two novellas and ten stories exploring complex identities, from the acclaimed author of Corregidora, The Healing, and Palmares.

“Gayl Jones’s work represents a watershed in American literature. From a literary standpoint, her form is impeccable . . . and as a Black woman writer, her truth-telling, filled with beauty, tragedy, humor, and incisiveness, is unmatched.”
—Imani Perry, author of Looking for Lorraine and Breathe

Gayl Jones, who was first edited by Toni Morrison, has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century and was recently a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. This new collection of short fiction is only the second in her rich career and one that displays her strengths in the genre in many facets. Opening with two novella-length works, “Butter” and “Sophia,” this collection features Jones’s legendary talents in a range of settings and styles, from the hyperrealist to the mystical, in intricate multipart stories, in more traditional forms, and even in short fragments.

Her narrators are women and men, Black, Brown, Indigenous; her settings are historical and contemporary, in South America, Mexico, and the US; her themes center on complex identities, unorthodox longings and aspirations. She writes about spies, photographers, playground designers, cartoonists, and baristas; about workers and revolutionaries, about environmentalism, feminism, poetry, film, and love, but above all about our multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial society.

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"Run away from the boy that gives you butterflies, he's going to break your heart." Morgan Atkins has been faithfully living by that creed ever since her heart was broken by her first love. She's terrified of feeling that rush and those butterflies again. She's settled down with a respectable man, and lives comfortably and in luxury. She has everything and wants for nothing...but her life is missing that spark.

When someone from her past erupts into her perfect life, Morgan starts to feel that rush again. Those butterflies. And while her mind tells her she shouldn't be going down this road, her heart tells her something else. The more involved she becomes in the illicit affair that follows, the more she can't tell the difference between right and wrong. Someone will end up hurt. Someone may end up dead. Will Morgan survive this storm? Or will she be ruined again by the ultimate heartbreak?

EVENT DEETS:

When: February 4, 2023, at 6:30 PM (Door Open at 6:00 PM)

Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX 77004)

How: Purchase your ticket TODAY! Each ticket comes with entry as well as two cocktails. THIS EVENT IS FOR ADULTS (21+) ONLY!

ABOUT THE SPELLING BEE:

Contestants will be asked to spell words that speak to the theme of Black History Month over the course of four rounds. If you misspell the word, you are out!  As the words get harder, you might be able to Phone a Friend or Battle to earn your place back into the competition. The last three contestants standing will receive a prize!

Fun and music-filled, this event is for folks looking for something BLACKITY BLACK to do on a Saturday night! 

If you have any questions please reach out to laniseharris@gmail.com or chanecka@kindredstorieshtx.com.

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A paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow–era violence, the legal apparatus that sustained it, and its enduring legacy, from a renowned legal scholar.

If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn’t lynching the law?

In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in a series of harrowing cases from 1920 to 1960. From rendition, the legal process by which states make claims to other states for the return of their citizens, to battles over state and federal jurisdiction and the outsize role of local sheriffs in enforcing racial hierarchy, Burnham maps the criminal legal system in the mid-twentieth-century South, and traces the unremitting line from slavery to the legal structures of this period?and through to today.

Drawing on an extensive database, collected over more than a decade and exceeding 1,000 cases of racial violence, she reveals the true legal system of Jim Crow, and captures the memories of those whose stories have not yet been heard.

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By the Light of My Father's Smile is Alice Walker's first novel in six years--a stunning, original, and important book by "one of the best American writers of today" (The Washington Post).

A family from the United States goes to the remote Sierras in Mexico--the writer-to-be, Susannah; her sister, Magdalena; her father and mother.  And there, amid an endangered band of mixed-race Blacks and Indians called the Mundo, they begin an encounter that will change them more than they could ever dream.  Moving back and forth in time, and among unforgettable characters and their stories, Walker crosses conventional borders of all kinds as she explores in this magical novel the ways in which a woman's denied sexuality leads to the loss of the much prized and necessary original self; and how she regains that self, even as her family's past of lies and love is transformed.

By the Light of My Father's Smile presents, as Alice Walker puts it, "a celebration of sexuality, its absolute usefulness in the accessing of one's mature spirituality, and the father's role in assuring joy or sorrow in this arena for his female children."  It explores the richness and coherence of alternative culture, experience of sexuality as a celebration of life, of trust in Nature and the Spirit, even as it affirms the belief, as Walker says, "that it is the triumphant heart, not the conquered heart, that forgives.  And that love is both timeless and beyond time."

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A prophetic new collection of poems from Shane McCrae, “a shrewd composer of American stories” (The New Yorker).

Writing you I give the death I take
I know I should feel wounded by your death
I write to you to make a wound write back

Shane McCrae fashions a world of endings and infinites in Cain Named the Animal. With cyclical, rhythmic lines that create and re-create images of our shared and specific pasts, he writes into and through the wounds that we remember and “strains toward a vision of joy” (Will Brewbaker, Los Angeles Review of Books).

Cain Named the Animal expands upon the biblical, heavenly world that McCrae has been building throughout his previous collections; he writes of Eden, of the lost tribe that watched time enter the garden and God rehearse the world, and of the cartoon torments of hell. Yet for McCrae, these outer bounds of our universe are inseparable from the lives and deaths on Earth, from the mundanities and miracles of time passing and people growing up, growing old, and growing apart. As he writes, “God first thought time itself / Was flawed but time was God’s first mirror.”

“Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. Yes, I gave this book a six-star rating out of a possible five. Where to even begin with how much I loved this book.” Goodreads Reviewer, Transgender Bookworm

Die-hard traditional Texas is the backdrop where success and nonconformity cannot coexist for Bryan Hicks, an African-American divorced father of two kids, Lindsey, the athletic golden child, and Lance, the unorthodox queer thespian.

Bryan's mother loves bragging to her high-society girlfriends about Bryan's accomplishments and promotion to VP at a large multinational oil/gas company. Bryan vigorously steers clear of conversations with his mother about who he is dating because Bryan has been secretly dating Nadia, a transgender woman.

Cakewalk is contemporary fiction based on Douglas Bell's past experiences. Bell speaks from an African-American heteronormative (privileged) cisgender voice to candidly expose the trauma of transphobia and homophobia. Bell wants to humanize the struggle of trans women to live on their terms. Bell asks us to believe in ourselves, trust in ourselves, and don’t let society define who you are. There is enough courage within you to be the person you want to be.

Editorial Reviews
Goodreads Reviewer, Erikka
I must say this book absolutely had me by the first chapter. Each character represented someone i have have met or known and truly had me hooked. The fact that as I dove deeper into each page it was as if I was watching a movie of so many lives play out right before me. This up and coming author has truly snatched my attention and made me reflect on the perspectives of others as well as the symbolism throughout this read. If you want to laugh, cry, feel anger, empathy, and reflection on how and who you are as well as get a little hot and heavy this is definitely the right book for you. Step into a world you may have never known existed and watch the similarities of what all humans long for no matter the pronoun.

Rawles’ transcendent, hyperrealistic paintings of Black bodies in water reckon with the legacy of racial injustice

Merging hyperrealism, poetic abstraction and the cultural and historical symbolisms of water, Los Angeles–based artist Calida Rawles (born 1976) creates unique portraits of Black bodies submerged in and interacting with bright, mysterious bodies of water. The water, itself a sort of character within the paintings, functions as an element that signifies both physical and spiritual healing, as well as historical trauma and racial exclusion.
For her first solo museum show at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Rawles creates a bridge between her signature style and a story within Miami’s history that is often ignored and obscured. She takes as her subject the residents of Overtown, a once prosperous Miami neighborhood dismantled by systemic racism and gentrification. For the first time, Rawles photographed her subjects submerged in water at the formerly segregated Virginia Key Beach. By taking photographs in situ, Rawles directly engages with the legacy of the Atlantic slave trade, the Jim Crow–era south and Miami’s own ecological history.

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The breakout poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman

Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, Amanda Gorman’s remarkable new collection reveals an energizing and unforgettable voice in American poetry. Call Us What We Carry is Gorman at her finest. Including “The Hill We Climb,” the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, Joe Biden, and bursting with musical language and exploring themes of identity, grief, and memory, this lyric of hope and healing captures an important moment in our country’s consciousness while being utterly timeless.

From a pioneering Black feminist and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, an urgent and exhilarating memoir-manifesto-handbook about how to rein in the excesses of cancel culture so we can truly communicate and solve problems together.

In 1979, Loretta Ross was a single mother who’d had to drop out of Howard University. She was working at Washington, DC’s Rape Crisis Center when she got a letter from a man in prison saying he wanted to learn how to not be a rapist anymore. At first, she was furious. As a survivor of sexual violence, she wanted to write back pouring out her rage. But instead, she made a different choice, a choice to reject the response her trauma was pushing her towards, a choice that set her on the path towards developing a philosophy that would come to guide her whole career: rather than calling people out, try to call even your unlikeliest allies in. Hold them accountable—but do so with love.

Calling In is at once a handbook, a manifesto, and a memoir—because the power of Loretta Ross’s message comes from who she is and what she’s lived through. She’s a Black woman who’s deprogrammed white supremacists, a survivor who’s taught convicted rapists the principles of feminism. With stories from her five remarkable decades in activism, she vividly illustrates why calling people in—inviting them into conversation instead of conflict by focusing on your shared values over a desire for punishment—is the more strategic choice if you want to make real change. And she shows you how to do so, whether in the workplace, on a college campus, or in your living room.

Courageous, awe-inspiring, and blisteringly authentic, Calling In is a practical new solution from one of our country’s most extraordinary change-makers—one anyone can learn to use to transform frustrating and divisive conflicts that stand in the way of real connection with the people in your life.

Liara Tamani’s debut novel deftly and beautifully explores the universal struggles of growing up, battling family expectations, discovering a sense of self, and finding a unique voice and purpose. Taja Brown lives with her parents, older brother, and younger sister in Houston, Texas. She has always known what the expectations of her conservative and tightly-knit African American family are—do well in school, go to church every Sunday, no intimacy before marriage. But Taja is trying to keep up with her friends as they experience their first kisses, first boyfriends, first everythings. And she’s tired of cheering for her athletic younger sister and an older brother who has more freedom just because he’s a boy. Taja dreams of going to college and forging her own relationship with the world and with God, but when she falls in love for the first time, those dreams are suddenly in danger of evaporating.

Based on the viral poem by Coretta Scott King honoree Junauda Petrus, this picture book debut imagines a radically positive future where police aren’t in charge of public safety and community well-being.

Petrus first published and performed this poem after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. With every subsequent police shooting, it has taken on new urgency, culminating in the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, blocks from Junauda's home.

In its picture book incarnation, Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers? is a joyously radical vision of community-based safety and mutual aid. It is optimistic, provocative, and ultimately centered in fierce love. Debut picture book artist Kristen Uroda has turned Junauda's vision for a city without precincts into a vibrant and flourishing urban landscape filled with wise and loving grandmothers of all sorts.

Returning to her hometown was not in the plans, and neither was falling for her former best friend…

Briyana Hayes can’t seem to catch a break.

The job offer she expected after taking an unpaid internship at a major shoe company didn’t come through. The friend who’d offered her a place to stay suddenly gave her forty-eight hours to vacate after a misunderstanding. And when she’s forced to move back to her hometown to live with her father and his mistress-turned-wife, it almost seems impossible for things to get any worse… until she runs into her former best friend who’s only gotten fine with time.

With his sixth season as the starting linebacker for his hometown Houston Skyhawks on the horizon, the only thing Lance Hawkins is looking forward to is another year of getting paid and chasing accolades. But when he discovers that the girl he once considered his best friend is back in the city, he quickly finds himself intrigued by a different kind of pursuit after seeing how attractive she’s gotten.

Even with the fallout of the past, their undeniable chemistry as friends makes it impossible for the two of them to remain distant. And once romantic feelings get involved, it doesn’t take long for Briyana and Lance to find themselves on a journey of not only reestablishing what once was, but also exploring what could be.

After years away from home, Summer Graves is back in Austin, Texas, to accept a new teaching position. Of all the changes to the old neighborhood, the most dispiriting one is the slated demolition of the high school her grandmother founded. There’s no way she can let developers destroy her memories and her family legacy. But the challenge stirs memories of another kind.

On the architectural team revitalizing the neighborhood, hometown girl Aiko Holt is all about progress. Then she sees Summer again. Some things never change.

Neither can forget the kiss they shared at their senior-year dance. Neither can back down from her unwavering beliefs about what’s right for the neighborhood.

For now, the only thing Summer and Aiko are willing to give in to is a heat that still burns. But can two women with so much passion—for what once was and what could be—agree to disagree long enough to fall in love?